Getting to know Hu

Chinese city does little to trumpet connections to its most famous son.

Beyond a few generic propaganda banners, the city of Taizhou has little obvious connection to its most famous son

As the Chinese president leads a landmark congress of the Communist party in Beijing this week, Al Jazeera travels to Hu Jintao's childhood home and finds a city that, like its most famous son, prefers to shun the limelight.

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Climbing up a shaky wooden ladder, 73-year-old Hu Juncai points to the other side of a high whitewashed wall at the old home of a former childhood playmate.

"There it is," he says "You can just see it through the trees."

Looking back almost 60 years he had no idea that his quiet, unassuming friend would go on to become the leader of an emerging superpower.

"Definitely, completely, I never thought about it," he says.

That friend was Hu Jintao, general-secretary of the Chinese Communist party and president to one-fifth of the world's population.

According to official Communist party accounts, China's president hails from the poor inland province of Anhui.

Anonymity

Largely hidden from view Hu Jintao’s family home shows signs of having been restored

But as Hu Juncai – no relation to the president - and anyone else in the city of Taizhou will tell you, it is here that the man who would become president was born and brought up.

The former homes of other Chinese leaders, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and even Hu's predecessor, Jiang Zemin, have all become museums – places of pilgrimage for the party faithful.

Here in Taizhou - an otherwise anonymous city in China's booming Yangtze delta - the traditional grey brick courtyard home where the young Hu grew up is now hidden away, unmarked, in the shadow of a new high-rise branch of a Chinese bank.

Major industries: Machinery, electrical and electronics, foodstuff, chemistry, textile, pharmaceutical and construction materialsTaizhou is also home to hundreds of ancient ruins from the Han and Tang dynasties

The humble neighbourhood where he grew up still stands, a warren of centuries-old alleys surrounded by gleaming new shopping malls.

That it has not been knocked down like thousands of similar neighbourhoods across China is perhaps the only indication of its lofty connections.

But while other world leaders might at least get an enamel sign marking the site of their ancestral homes, the only thing adorning the wall outside Hu's former home is, rather incongruously, a condom vending machine.

Peering over the wall, the house itself shows signs of having been recently restored. Efforts to get a closer look are shooed away by uniformed bank security guards, but not before a sneaked photograph.

In fact, other than a few uplifting billboards emblazoned with Hu's trademark call to "build a harmonious society" – the like of which is seen in countless other Chinese cities – the city of Taizhou does nothing to trumpet its connection to its most famous son.

"He's not interested in adulation," says Hu Juncai, pointing to the walls surrounding the old Hu family home.

'Mild and calm'

Hu Jun Cai still lives in the neighbourhood where he once played with a young Hu Jintao

"His family was very poor, so his uncle looked after him," he recalls. "His whole life was very simple, even when he was a kid he didn't like vanity."

It seems the younger Hu Jintao was, perhaps, a bit of a geek, burying himself in books or playing sports but otherwise keeping to himself.

"He was a pretty mild boy, very calm," recalls Hu Juncai. "He wasn't a naughty child. Even when he was a kid he kept his promises – he said something and he meant it."

Despite downplaying its biggest claim to fame, Taizhou seems to have done well from Hu's rise to power.